Your Daily Jefferson: Classical Liberalism and Unemployment

The author of the Declaration of Independence speaks out on the horror of men without machines land at the very same time that there is machines land without men.

Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.

Jefferson suggested using the coercive power of the state to keep people from hoarding land. I simply want to use the printing press to keep people from hoarding money.

2 comments

People today are still more inclined to hoard land over machines, unfortunately for good reason. Even though human capital is only an incidental component of production, it is tied to it like a ball and chain. What that means is that people cannot envision their own survival outside of either land or a job. This also means that they not only want the factories to come home but they also do not trust capitalism to keep them alive. Because human capital is currently devalued (in the aggregate), the business machines that augment and multiply human capital are also devalued. If ways can be found to value human capital once again, the machinery of technology will become valuable again, and people will not feel they have to hide in money and land.

Inflation is unequally a tax on the poor, not the rich. Working people see prices rise but not incomes. Rich people can invest or hedge, but most people don’t have reserves to do that. What you’re really doing is using the printing press to unfairly transfer wealth from the poor to the rich by reducing the purchasing power of their income.